Frederic Kerrest
Vice Chairman & Co-Founder, Okta. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveacademic
Frederic Kerrest is the Co-Founder and Vice Chairman of Okta. He previously served as Okta's Chief Operating Officer and is on the professional faculty at UC Berkeley Haas.
1shows
1appearances
10statements
3resolved
1supported
1contradicted
33%fully supported
24said about them ↓ Everything Frederic Kerrest said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Kerrest: Successful Enterprise Software Founders Are Industry Veterans, Not 20-Somethings
“I think if you look at successful enterprise software founders, whether it was Mark Benioff and Parker Harris, Salesforce, or whether it was Anil Bushri, And Dave Duffield at Workday or whether it was Fred Luddy at ServiceNow, these are all folks who did not s…”
Kerrest: Exceptional Founders Are Constrained Without Large, Growing Markets
“You can have a super special founder, but if you don't have that big market opportunity and there's not that opportunity to create the growth and to figure out the go to market strategy and all these other things, I think you're going to be kind of constrained…”
Kerrest: Startups should dominate small markets with adjacent expansion opportunities
“What he's looking for, and I agree with, is you want to become a monopolist in a small market with a lot of adjacencies.”
Kerrest: Two to four co-founders is the optimal startup team size
“I think if you look at the data says that solo founders always have a tougher time. I think you really see a lot of success in the two through four group of co-founders. I think once you get five co-founders or more, there's just too many cooks in the kitchen.”
Okta was Andreessen Horowitz's first fund investment check in 2009
“We were the first check that they wrote out of their first fund. In the summer of 2009 was into our seed round, and then obviously they led our series A in 2010.”
Okta pivoted from small businesses to mid-market and enterprise in 2011
“We went from focusing on small, medium businesses to focusing more on mid-market companies and a little bit upscale because those companies, A, had more pain, B, they had more budget, and C, they were looking for solutions like the ones we had”
Kerrest: Okta restrained sales spending with a mandatory payback governor
“In our case, it was always about how fast can we grow, but we want to have a certain amount of payback on the investment that we made in sales marketing. So we kind of had a governor on how long it was going to take to get paid back for a dollar invested and g…”
Kerrest: Founders only need to make 3 to 5 key decisions annually
“And really at the end of the day, as a startup founder, there's probably three or five major decisions you have to get right every year. And that will really dictate what's going to happen with your company in the future.”
Okta revenue performance in 2011 was flat despite aggressive projections
“Frankly, if I look back at 20 11 and I look at what our revenue projections were versus how they actually ended up, the projections, of course, were up and to the right. The results were actually pretty flat.”
The other half of the tape: Frederic Kerrest's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 23 times in 9 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 20Todd McKinnon 1Mike Maples 1Ben Horowitz 1
Statements about Frederic Kerrest, by other people (1)
Ralston: Y Combinator Weighs Founding Teams Far Above Ideas
“Well, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, because my weighting is far more on the team at the stage in which I choose companies for angel investments, in which YC chooses companies to fund. I will always Pick a great team. Assume they'll figure it out, or…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 23
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2021 6 mentions in 1 episode
2019 16 mentions in 7 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Sequoia's Pat Grady on What Sequoia Is Focused On Today, How Sequoia Think About Investment Decision-Making Processes & Why It Is Important To Trade A Few Points of Efficiency for Culture When It Comes To Attribution
- 20VC: a16z's Scott Kupor on The Biggest Learnings From Scaling a16z from $300m to $7Bn AUM, The Biggest Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Pitching VCs & Why VC Is Simply A Customer Service Business
- 20VC: a16z's Ben Horowitz on How To Create An Environment of Trust with Founders, How and Why Creating Shocking Rules Is So Impactful To Culture & What The Samurai, Shaka Senghor and Toussaint Teach Us About Company Culture Building
- 20VC: Why Passion Is Overrated When It Comes To Starting Companies, Why VC Is Overrated As A Financing Mechanism & Why You Should Never Sell Your Company with Waseem Daher, Founder & CEO @ Pilot
- 20VC: Plaid's Zach Perret on Why You Have To Hire For Spikes and What That Really Means, Fintech Predictions From Incumbent Entrants To The Rise of Europe & The 2 Big Questions That CEOs Should Ask Themselves
- 20VC: Y Combinator's New President, Geoff Ralston on The Single Most Important Perspective An Investor Can Provide A Founder, The Biggest Lessons From Working Alongside Paul Graham & Why You Will Lose As An Investor If You "Profile Invest"
- 20VC: Why Lead Lime's Series D Funding Round, Why Engineers Are Underpaid & Why 74% of US Venture Firms Still Do Not Have Female GPs
- every mention in 2019, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Frederic's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Vice Chairman & Co-Founder, Okta | 1 | 10 | 33% 1/3 | full record on 20VC → |